Al White

With the state Senate District 26 race decided, Senate Republicans released their 2009 committee assignments on Thursday.

Senate Democrats announced their committee assignments last week.

In some cases, though, there isn't a name to go with the assignment. Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry (R-Grand Junction) has assigned the yet-to-be-determined senator from the 15th Senate District to the Judiciary, Local Government, and Health and Human Services committees.

State Rep. Don Marostica (R-Loveland) was named to the Joint Budget Committee by the House Minority Leader Mike May (R-Parker) on Thursday morning.

Marostica will take the position previously held by state Rep. Al White (R-Hayden). White, elected to the state Senate on Tuesday, will remain on the JBC as a minority member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

By all accounts, the Democrats' five-seat majority in the Colorado State Senate is safe, but either party could gain a couple seats during this year's election.

The key Senate districts to watch are the 8th state Senate District, the 16th District, the 19th District, the 23rd District and the 26th District. Of those, two are open seats being relinquished by Republicans, one has a Republican incumbent, one has a Democratic incumbent, and one is being vacated by a Democrat.

Only competitive state Senate seats are profiled. Democrats Rollie Heath and Peter Groff are running unopposed in Districts 18 and 33, respectively.

Senate District 8 Democratic candidate Ken Brenner loaned his campaign $10,000 last month, according to campaign finance filings obtained by the Grand Junction Sentinel's Political Notebook.

The loan gives Brenner $12,194 for August; state Rep. Al White, Brenner's Republican opponent, raised $19,995 during that time solely through donations, according to Political Notebook.

White has $68,919 cash-on-hand, while Brenner has $31,211, the Sentinel's political blog stated. But as Political Notebook pointed out, both candidates have enough cash to hit the airwaves.

State Sen. Jack Taylor (R-Steamboat Springs) said Wednesday that if state Rep. Al White (R-Hayden) will likely stay on the Joint Budget Committee if wins Taylor's seat in Senate District 8 this November.

White currently is the lone Republican state House member on the six-member super-committee, which is in charge of writing the annual appropriations bill. With Democrats controlling both houses of the state legislature, the committee is composed of two Democrats and one Republican from both the state House and Senate.

The lone GOP state senator on the committee now is Steve Johnson, a Fort Collins resident who is running for Larimer County Commissioner.

"Hopefully, (White) will be the logical guy to, once he's elected to the Senate, to move ahead and be the the Republican Senate member of the state budget committee," Taylor said following a breakfast for the Colorado delegation to the Republican National Convention.